by Livi Michael
She never wanted to witness such suffering again. It was all her fault, she had caused all this. Time and time again she thought of him lying on the battlefield under a corpse.
And there was the other thing – the thing she’d chosen not to think about or discuss, but which returned to her with a savage pain. The moment when she’d seen Henry watching the stable boy.
She’d walked away from him then – she would not discuss it now or ever. But at the peak of his illness which had broken out like fire in his flesh, she’d thought deliriously that this was her fault also, for walking away.
That was when the terrible uncontrolled racing of her heart and mind began.
She wouldn’t leave him; she stayed with him day and night, trying out all her own remedies, potions and poultices on him, waiting for him to become lucid again and recognize her.
And all that time she was waiting for news of her son. Who was marching with his uncle, to fight the king.
When she’d heard the news from Tewkesbury her first response was relief. Jasper hadn’t got there in time. He’d got as far as Chepstow before hearing that the battle was lost, and had retreated behind the walls of the town.
He hadn’t fought in the battle at all, and neither had her son.
Her relief hadn’t lasted long, however, for King Edward had sent Roger Vaughn of Tretower to besiege the town. But Jasper had captured and beheaded Sir Roger. Then he’d escaped with her son, and it was weeks before she heard anything more.
In the meantime, Fauconberg, cousin to the Earl of Warwick, had besieged London. Queen Elizabeth’s brother, Anthony Woodville, had saved the city, attacking Fauconberg’s men with the Tower guard.
Then King Edward had arrived in London with all his men, leading Margaret of Anjou behind him. And a spate of executions had begun.
That same night King Henry had died in the Tower. Some said of grief and indignation, others of the Duke of Gloucester.
The king and prince were dead, the queen imprisoned in the Tower. She could not even imagine the devastation of the queen. But her cause was over; there would be no more wars to fight. That was Margaret’s first thought.
Her second was that her son was now the only surviving heir of the house of Lancaster. King Edward, it was said, was anxious to obtain him.
She heard that Jasper and Henry had made the difficult journey from Chepstow to Pembroke Castle. Then that King Edward had dispatched William Herbert’s son to the castle to take them prisoner. She had already written to them there, to tell them to leave the country if they could; accept no offer of pardon from the king. But by the time her messenger got there the castle was already under siege, not from Herbert but from Morgan ap Thomas, who was married to one of Roger Vaughn’s daughters.
It lasted eight days until David ap Thomas had arrived and unexpectedly waged war on his brother. Jasper and Henry had escaped from the castle and gone to the port of Tenby. From there Jasper had hired a small boat to take them to France.
She’d heard this news at the end of September. One week later her husband had died.
She’d climbed into bed with him as he died, clasping his head to her bony chest.
I’m sorry, she’d said, Don’t leave me.
But he hadn’t even known who she was. He’d died on the fourth day of October, 1471. Leaving her alone.
The only thing that kept her going in that dark time was news of her son.
Jasper and Henry had been blown off course by a storm. They’d landed in Brittany and had been received cordially by Duke Francis. Margaret knew nothing about Duke Francis, but she knew that King Edward had already opened negotiations to get them back.
That was all she knew.
She wanted to write to her son, to tell him that his stepfather was dead. But because of the incoherence of her thoughts she couldn’t seem to complete any task, and did not know what to say. It seemed she had forgotten how to think.
She fell asleep intermittently, at odd times of the day, when praying or attempting to do her household accounts. When she woke up, still exhausted, for a space of time she could not remember where she was.
Everything fell away from her: estates, titles, family, rank and place.
Only her son stood between her and a void.
So many mothers had lost their sons, but she still had hers. She had sunk down, through layers of herself, to this small hard core of truth. Her aunt, the dowager Duchess of Somerset, had lost all her sons. And Queen Margaret – but that lady’s pain did not bear thinking about. She had lost everything there was to lose. Except her life.
Margaret herself had lost her father, two husbands, three fathers-in-law and her cousins in the course of all these wars. These absent people, these holes in her life, were all she had left. They were more real to her than the people who were present.
She’d worn out her knees praying, and this was the result.
She had nothing to turn to now, and no one. Her husband, who had been her best and wisest friend, was dead. Her son was further away from her than he’d ever been. But he was alive.
She should write to him. But she’d misplaced the paper.
Slowly she opened the drawer beneath the table. There inside it was not paper but the Book of Hours given to her so long ago by Margaret of Anjou. She stared at it blankly for a moment, then took it out. She ran her fingers over the embossed cover.
When you write in it, think of me.
How the world had changed since she’d been given that book. So many people had been killed, so many noble houses ended. There were new boundaries, shifting alliances, in Europe as well as here. She was living in a different world.
She opened it and smoothed the page. She’d written in it so many times there was not much space left. Except on the final page.
Ten years ago, when her son had been taken away from her after Towton, she’d thought her fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Now, after this other battle, she’d lost her husband and her son was out of the country, in exile. She didn’t know if she would ever see him again.
She dipped the quill in the ink and brought it, shaking slightly, to the page.
EXTRACT FROM THE SECRET CHRONICLE OF MARGARET BEAUFORT
In this year 1471, being the first year of the new reign of King Edward IV, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, only son and heir of Edmund Tudor and Margaret, Countess of Richmond, was taken into exile in Brittany by his uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke.
Officially he’d lost that title of course. It had been given to William Herbert’s son.
Now being in the lands and custody of Francis II, Duke of Brittany, and hostage thereto.
When she closed her eyes she could see her son as she had seen him so often since he’d been taken from her; a little boy lost in the corridors of a great castle. But he was not a little boy any longer. And he was not alone.
Leaving his mother bereft, and so wonderfully tossed on seas of misfortune that her hope no longer knew its course.
She hesitated, then began again with increasing firmness.
Yet possessed of a single purpose and sole intent to take such measures as should be necessary to preserve her son’s life, his fortune and estate, to return him to this land and to his rightful inheritance,
She paused again, then pressed the quill down hard.
at whatever cost or subsidy or sacrifice.
And on the last line she pressed down hardest of all.
So help me God.
About the Chronicles
chron-i-cle: A factual written account of important or historical events in the order of their occurrence.
England has a rich and varied tradition of chronicle writing. Most early chronicles were written by monks and associated with the great monastic houses, which often had a designated chronicler. The monastery of Crowland provided a chronicle with continuations that conclude in 1486. These may not have been written by a monk, however, but by a bishop or lawyer who was staying in the monastery.
By
the fifteenth century the monastic tradition of chronicle writing was in decline. In the reign of Edward IV, however, William Caxton brought his printing press to England. As a result there was a greater variety of chronicle writing than ever before. The Brut – a French history of England which begins in legendary pre-history and concludes (in continuation) in 1461 – was widely popular in the fifteenth century and printed by Caxton in 1480. A further continuation, usually ascribed to John Warkworth, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, covers the first thirteen years of the reign of Edward IV.
Latin was still widely used as the language of chronicle writing. John Rous, an antiquary from Warwick, wrote his histories in both English and Latin, and John Blacman wrote his memoir of Henry VI in Latin after the death of the monarch. The Annales Rerum Anglicarum is a Latin compilation of short, disconnected narratives, and the Brief Latin Chronicle, as the title implies, is also written in that language. However, in this period the English language finally replaced Norman French and Latin as the language of literature. This seems to have opened the field to popular readership and to a number of freelance writers of chronicles in English. William Gregory, for instance, a London skinner, sheriff and mayor, wrote his Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in English, though since the chronicle finishes three years after his death in 1467 it is assumed that there is an anonymous continuator. Similarly Robert Fabyan, a prominent London draper and alderman, wrote the New Chronicles of England and France in English in the first decade of the sixteenth century. Hearne’s Fragment is an anonymous work covering the period of the 1460s, and was first published by Thomas Hearne in 1719. By his own account, however, its author was acquainted with Edward IV and claims to have heard part of his narrative from the king’s ‘own mouth’.
A new group of chronicles came from the towns. These civic narratives were all written in the vernacular, and most were centred on London – the Great Chronicle of London and the Short English Chronicle were written at this time.
Official chronicles written in support of the Yorkist cause include the Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire and the History of the Arrivall of Edward IV in England and the Final Recovery of his Kingdomes from Henry VI. The Arrivall is an account of King Edward’s campaign to reclaim the throne in 1471. It is written by an anonymous servant of Edward IV and is strongly sympathetic to his cause.
Polydore Vergil, Italian cleric and Renaissance humanist historian, came to England in 1502 and was encouraged by Henry VII to write a comprehensive history of England, an Anglica Historia, which was not finished until 1531. He has sometimes been called the ‘father of English history’, and his epic work marks a shift in historical writing towards the ‘authorized version’ that could be printed and widely distributed throughout the known world. Thomas More, also a humanist scholar, wrote the History of King Richard III in English and Latin during the early part of the reign of Henry VIII, when he was under-sheriff of London. Both these accounts, therefore, can be said to have been influenced by the Tudor version of events.
Other accounts of the period are written by foreign emissaries. These include Jean de Waurin, a Burgundian soldier and diplomat who served both Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy and his successor Charles the Bold, and Philippe de Commines, who wrote his memoirs at the court of Louis XI of France. Dominic Mancini, an Italian poet, was sent from the court of Louis XI to report on English affairs. Georges Chastellain, a Burgundian chronicler and poet, became secretary to Pierre de Brézé, and wrote Chronique des choses de mon temps (1417–74) and Le Temple de Boccace, which was dedicated to Margaret of Anjou.
The Milanese State Papers are a collection of ambassadorial letters sent mainly by Milanese envoys in England, France and Burgundy, to successive dukes of Milan.
In this period, an increasing number of records were kept – rolls and files in the Public Records Office, government records such as the Rotuli Parliamentorum in the Chancery archive, and local records such as the Coventry Leet Book, or the York Civic Records. Also the first collections of private letters survive – around 250 from the Plumptons of York and more than a thousand from the Pastons of Norfolk, which provide an invaluable glimpse into the daily lives of people caught up in the ‘intestinal conflicts’ and political turmoil of the period.
None of the chronicles can be said to be definitive. They are partisan, contradictory, unreliable in certain respects, but also vivid and readable accounts of a tumultuous period of English history. Their approach to writing, and to history, is very different from that of the contemporary historical novel; they convey the spirit of the age without resorting to interior perspective or reflection. It seemed to me that the different approaches were complementary, and might usefully be brought together.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to the Chetham’s Library, as ever, and in particular to Fergus Wilde for help with the translations. And to my sons, Ben and Paul, for putting up with me.
THE BEGINNING
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First published 2015
Copyright © Livi Michael, 2015
Cover photo © Getty Images
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-241-96671-6